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If you waltz into the bookies on your high street — there are still lots of them, even if real shops are closing apace — and ask for the odds on the next general election, they will all tell you a similar story. A Labour win is the most likely outcome by far. Some form of bungled and bungling coalition might squeak back in. A straight Tory win? Hardly any chance.

Might as well chuck your money down the drain, sir. The supposedly more sophisticated internet markets such as Betfair say much the same.

The thinking that informs the odds is simple: the economy is in the tank and there’s hardly any sign of a proper recovery. Government cuts are about to bite properly. And Messrs Cameron and Osborne look, to all but their own, like a pair of bewilderingly smug fellows to whom life has been far too kind.

Nick Clegg? Forget Nick Clegg.

Lately, the view from the City wasn’t that much different. The Square Mile seemed resigned to a long period of flatlining economic growth and a wishy-washy coalition for years to come.

Then last week something happened which prompted a rethink. The Prime Minister’s speech on the EU referendum caused one closely watched market to move sharply. IG Group, the City’s most important spread betting house, has a politics department that offers a binary bet (don’t ask, just stick with me). The odds suddenly shifted from agreeing that the Conservatives were a lame horse to suggesting they might be coming up on the outside. The chances of a Tory win were priced at 27 per cent, up from 22. Still not likely, but looking interesting. Labour’s odds tumbled from 44 per cent to 36.

The City boys who are good at maths if not much else, and who bet all day for a living, nudged each other. This is on, they said.

For most of them, the hope of a Tory win is partly wishful thinking, but more than a few of them have started to put some money where their gigantic mouths are. And some have started to reach the following conclusion: the Tories are playing a blinder. Or at least playing a bad hand well.

The case goes something like this. That the economy hasn’t turned yet is actually not unhelpful because it provides cover for the cuts the Tories want to make anyway and because it allows them to keep arguing that the mess they inherited was even worse than anyone knew.

Economic growth and positive headlines now would be forgotten come election time in any case — what matters is sentiment in the six or perhaps nine months prior to an election, likely to be in May 2015. Better to have things going consistently in the right direction than to have a good quarter here and a bad quarter there. So such firepower and stimulus as an austerity-first government is able to provide shouldn’t be employed now.

Even if the Tory party really is as hopeless as its biggest critics suggest, it would have to be unlucky as well as clueless for the recession cycle not to have turned by then. Which means there will be even more people in work than there already are (economists can’t explain why the present employment figures are so strong — then again, some of them can’t explain gravy).

Assuming there is growth and the biggest companies are spending the cash they have been hoarding to protect against Armageddon, then pay rises should be overtaking inflation by then too.

The housing market, already showing signs of recovery, would be motoring, which always makes people feel richer, whatever the reality. And yet interest rates should still be low, making mortgages as affordable as they are likely to ever be.

As a result of infrastructure projects, help for SMEs and an export drive on the back of an improving economy globally, growth will have returned. The electorate will have more pounds in their pockets, and even the moribund high street will recover.

So the economic figures in summer 2014 start to look strong. By Christmas they’re humming. By April 2015, Britain is booming. Talk of a lost decade will be forgotten.

Back to the politics: the Tories unleash a truly ferocious campaign against Ed Balls, a man it may be easy to demonise owing to a personal manner not universally regarded as charming. Expect attack ads along the lines of: “Do you really want to hand the keys back to the man who crashed the car?”

Last week Balls said Osborne had been complacent. From the man who penned the line “the end of boom and bust” this seemed rich.

It is far from clear that the other Ed is, or can ever be, an electoral asset either. Polls that put Labour ahead still don’t show much regard for the idea of Miliband as PM. And swing voters don’t seem to respond well to the class war stuff that Labour likes to chuck at the Etonians.

It seems fair to assume that the Liberal vote will collapse, which would only be just — but not to assume that this will give more seats to Labour than to the Conservatives. With the Liberals floundering and the Ukip fox shot by Cameron’s offer of an in/out EU referendum, the Tories, so the argument goes, get over the line.

If you’re thinking that this comes from City types who were at least part responsible for crashing the economy in 2008 and you reserve the right to question their genius, that’s fair enough.

As even they would admit, predicting the future is difficult. On the other hand, if you’re a betting man, now might be a good time to have a punt. As legendary investor Sir John Templeton liked to say, the only way to make money in the stock market is to buy what most people are selling.

The Tories are regarded as a sell right now. Some of the clever money has started buying.